Whispered Magics (3 page)

“No, it’s leaves,” Lissa said, setting her backpack on the
sidewalk and bending over my hand.

I tipped my palm so everyone could see the thing. The glitter
was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

Lissa gasped. “There are words on it!
Look . . . it’s kind of old-fashioned, but I can read it. Here’s
an ‘I’, and there’s ‘molder’ —”

“Holder,” Nikki said. She grabbed my fingers in her strong
brown hand, staring down at the talisman, then up at us, a funny look on her
round face. “It says, ‘I grant the holder one wish’.”

“Whoa,” I said, feeling kind of like little electrical shocks
were zinging through my entire body. Had I, Margo O’Toole, found real magic at
last? “Lemme see—” Nikki let go of my hand and I nearly smacked myself in the
face. “You’re right,” I said, examining the fancy letters, which looked like
something from a fairy tale book.

“D’ you think it’s real?’ Nikki asked, rubbing her hands.

“No way,” Pat said, crossing her arms. “Toss it. It’s all
gross with mud and gunk, so it’s probably crawling with germs.”

“If you do, it’s mine,” Nikki said. “In fact, didn’t I see it
first?”

“We all saw it at the same time,” Lissa said quickly, flinging
her blonde braids over her shoulders. “You know we did. Margo just picked it up
first.”

Nikki grinned at me. “But if you don’t want it—”

“Who said I didn’t want it?” I retorted quickly. “That was
Pat.”

Everyone looked at Pat. All four of us girls are the same age,
and we live on the same block in a not-so-safe part of the city. We’ve been
going back and forth from school together for several years, because we aren’t
allowed to go alone. Pat’s the tallest, and sometimes it feels like she’s the
oldest. Her lips were pressed together in a familiar line, and her dark eyes
were, well,
austere
.

“You guys, it’s not going to work. Let’s get home before we
get into trouble,” Pat said. She sent a worried look up the street.

“Just a sec.” I turned it over in my hand. “Well, it’s not
like there’s a name or address on it. I say finders keepers.”

“We can make a wish first and then throw it away.” Lissa
looked my way, wrinkling her nose. “And after that, you can wash your hands.”

“Let’s go.” Pat’s voice was sharp. “I can’t believe you’re
messing with that thing at all.”

Nikki and Lissa gaped at her. They were obviously thinking,
was this really good old Pat, who was always so quiet and fair, and so kind she
couldn’t even step on bugs?

I knew she hated any mention of magic these days, but I
couldn’t tell them that.

“So, if we only get one wish,” Nikki said, “we better think a
little.”

“If it’s even real,” I said, sneaking a look at Pat.

It didn’t help. “I can’t believe you dummies,” she muttered,
and whirled around so all we saw was her back. Next to us was a weed-choked
vacant lot, left over from a fire. Stalking in the direction of a charred old
tree stump right in the middle, she yelled over her shoulder, “I’ll get started
on my homework while you waste your time on that thing.”

We all watched her march through the wet weeds, drop down onto
the tree stump, and yank her notebook out of her backpack. Lissa and Nikki
turned back to me and shrugged, looking down at the talisman. Nikki’s brow
puckered, and Lissa threw her braids back. “What do you think? Should we wish
for a thousand wishes?” she suggested.

“I’ve never read a story where that worked,” I said. “The
magic might just split up a thousand ways and you’ll get a little of each
wish—like just the front porch if you wish for a mansion, or if you want a
really cool pair of shoes, you’ll wind up with half a shoelace.”

Nikki gave a loud snort. “That’s one thing I really hate—those
stupid stories where the person is granted a wish and goes for something that
seems perfectly okay, but then it turns out to be a total disaster.”

Lissa bit her lip and did a little jazz step, backing away.
“You think that thing is going to zap us? It was in the gutter, after all.
Maybe it zapped someone else.”

I thought over all the magic stories I’d ever read—and I’ve
read a lot. “Someone might have tossed it,” I said, “but then maybe, after it
grants its wish, it might just kind of jump into space and land anywhere.”

“That’s one big jump, Margo.” Nikki grinned sourly as she
looked around at the familiar run-down apartment buildings and crummy old
stores. “I haven’t heard of any sudden millionaires in this neighborhood.”

“Is that what we should wish?” Lissa asked. “For a million
bucks?”

“Or a billion?” Nikki added, closing her eyes.

For about ten seconds, it felt great. I thought about my mom
and me getting away from our dinky apartment and buying a house with my share
of the money. A mansion! With an entire theme park in the yard. And a
limousine—for each of us.

Then I thought about what would happen if we couldn’t prove
how we’d gotten the money. “I wonder if the IRS would believe us,” I said. “The
FBI sure won’t.”

“Who says the IRS would have to know?” Lissa demanded. “We’ll
keep it a secret, of course.”

“Margo’s right.” Nikki threw her backpack down next to Lissa’s
and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Anybody who suddenly spends big amounts of
money gets investigated by nosy tax agents. I’ve seen it in a million detective
shows. They’ll think we’re with some kind of creepy gang.”

“We won’t spend big amounts.” Lissa fluttered her hands,
turning a pirouette. Then she stopped and sighed. “But then, even if we spend
tiny amounts, we’ll get investigated by nosy families. At least, I sure will.”

“Me, too,” Nikki grumped. “Heck—I buy a single candy bar with
my babysitting money, and my mom wants to know why the money didn’t go into my
college fund.”

I closed my fingers over the talisman. “I’m just wondering if
each of us might get a wish,” I said. “I mean, if I wish, then hand it off to
you, Nikki—you’d be the new holder. Then to Lissa.” I was thinking,
And if it really works, we could give it to
Pat.

“But it might disappear,” Nikki said, toeing the trash in the
gutter, as if another talisman might be uncovered. A car hissed by through the
wet street and Nikki jumped back from the splash.

“Let’s agree on the first wish,” Lissa said. “If it stays,
then we agree on the other wishes.”

“Fair’s fair,” Nikki said, kicking mud off her shoe.

“Okay,” I said. “So what’ll it be?”

“A mansion, maybe?” Nikki threw her arms wide. “Everyone has
her own room. No, two rooms. Five! A bathtub like a swimming pool for each!”

Lissa closed her eyes and sighed. I grinned, thinking again of
royal palaces with rooms and rooms of fun stuff to do.

But then Nikki snorted again and said, “Wait a minute. It’s
only one wish, you hogs.”

“What?” Lissa exclaimed.

“We have one wish,” Nikki repeated, looking from one of us to
the other, her brown eyes wary. “If we wish for a palace, we might get one, but
I bet it doesn’t come with furniture. And even if it did—” She made a terrible
face. “—who’s going to clean up a million rooms? Not me! It’s bad enough being
stuck with cleaning our little place when my mom’s too tired.”

“And who’s going to let a kid keep a palace in the middle of
the city?” Lissa said, shrugging her shoulders.

I groaned. “I can’t think of anything that won’t backfire.
Like, if we wish for an unending supply of ice cream—”

“—We end up barfing at the sight of it,” Lissa said. “I just
thought of that as well.”

We stared at each other.

“Maybe we could fix things in our lives,” Nikki said slowly.
“All four of us have had divorces happen in our families. Maybe it would work
for all of us—even Pat—if we wished our parents were back together again, and
all happy.”

We looked at each other. Lissa turned another slow pirouette,
then faced Nikki. “I hate to say it, but do you really want your dad back?”

Nikki’s head dropped, and her hair swung forward and covered
her face. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I didn’t have to. The few times her dad
had visited, it always ended up with him getting drunk and though Nikki never
complained in front of me, I think her dad was pretty mean to Nikki and her
brothers and sisters.

She looked up. “I don’t, but my mom might. At least, she’d
like another paycheck, or the child support he owes us, or something.”

Lissa said, “I like my step-parents now. If the magic brought
my parents together again, what would happen to my half-brother Sean, since his
father is my stepdad, and how about the new baby my stepmom is expecting?”

I’d been thinking while they talked, and I said, “In the
stories, forcing a change onto someone else’s life always turns out rotten.
Even if you did it for the best reasons.”

“It would be a good thing in Pat’s family,” Nikki said
seriously. “I mean, except for my dad, who’s just a flake, at least all our
parents want us. Hers don’t even want her anymore—and that aunt of hers is
mean. She just uses her for a maid and a babysitter.”

“Which makes it extra rotten,” Lissa added, “because there’s
no one in the world who works harder, at school or home, than Pat.”

“Or is more fair to other people.”

“I just don’t see why she’s so mad,” Lissa added, whirling in
another pirouette, and then stopping to look at Pat on her tree stump.

I opened my hand again and stared down at the talisman,
thinking hard. Pat and I lived next door to each other so we’d spent a lot of
time together. When we were little, we’d acted out the adventure stories we
read and loved. I’d started collecting Weird Things in first grade, and Pat
used to help me—we always hoped one of them would turn out to be left by
aliens, or would transport us to another world. Then the problems started at
Pat’s home, and trying to test the magic from books to see if it was real
turned from a game into a kind of quest.

Lissa and Nikki knew about my Weird Things collection, but not
about the quest for real magic. I thought about how in fourth grade Pat and I
used to run into thick fog banks, hoping they’d turn out to be a magic gateway
to Middle Earth, and how we tried to open the backs of our closets to see if we
could get to Narnia.

Once we tried a love potion on her parents. That was before
both of them left and her grandmother moved in. Pat’s grandmother really loved
her, but after only a year she died, and Pat’s aunt moved in—with her kids.
Pat’s life was now exactly like Cinderella’s—except there was no fairy godmother
and Pat no longer believed in magic.

I looked over at her, sitting on the stump crouched over her
math book. I couldn’t see her face, but her bony shoulders looked fierce.
That’s why she’s angry,
I thought.
It’ll hurt too much if this thing doesn’t
work.

But I couldn’t say anything—I knew she’d hate it if I talked
about all our tries to get to Narnia and Oz. I turned back to Nikki and Lissa.

“We can’t bring her grandma back to life,” I said.

Nikki made a face. “Yeah, Margo’s right. She might come back a
zombie.”

“Eeeeeugh,” Lissa and I said together, exchanging gross-out
looks.

“But if her parents were together again, and loved her?” Lissa
said.

My mind was racing now. “Would it really work, though?”

“What do you mean?” Lissa and Nikki exclaimed at the same
time, grinned at each other, and then turned to me expectantly. Another car
whooshed through the rainy street, but this time neither of them noticed the
splash.

“Well,” I said, “is it right to make people go back to the way
they were without asking? I mean, how would you like it if a magic spell forced
you to be like you were in first grade?” I asked.

Lissa said slowly, “We’re talking about getting them to love
Pat again.”

“But they don’t,” Nikki said, frowning. “I think I see it—it’d
be fake, wouldn’t it?”

“Right,” I said. “At least, fake or not, it would be fake for
Pat. She’d always know they were back together because of the spell, not for
her. Or even for each other.”

Lissa hopped again. “I see. They might not even act real—but
like programmed dolls, or something, if we force them to change.” She stuck out
her tongue. “Heck, there’s always a chance this won’t even work in the first
place.” She glared at the talisman on my palm. “Will it really matter to us if
it doesn’t?”

Again we looked at each other. “Not to me,” Nikki said,
smacking her hands together. “I got my life planned out. College, law school,
then goin’ after corporate pirates.”

Lissa whispered, “If it just were mine, I might have wished
that I’d get a scholarship to a good dance school—except then I’d have to worry
that I was good enough once I got there.”

“You want to wish you would be the best dancer in the world?”
I asked.

Lissa’s whole body tensed as she closed her eyes, then she
said, “No. It’s like what you said about Pat—I’d always know the applause was
for the talisman, and not for me. I’d hate that.”

“So what do we do, throw it away?” I asked.

“There’s a chance it’s real,” Nikki said.

“I know,” Lissa said. “I’m just wondering if we could ask Pat
if there’s something she would want.”

“And get our noses bitten off?” Nikki said, grinning. “She
already let us know pretty clearly she thought this whole thing was stupid.”

They turned to me. “She wouldn’t touch that talisman,” I said.
“Though she’s the one who needs it most.”

“So what do we do?” Lissa asked. “We can’t change her life for
her—and she won’t take the thing and do it herself.”

I said, “Maybe we can’t send her to the ball, but we could
give her a glass slipper.”

“What?” Nikki asked, making one of her faces.

Lissa’s eyes went wide, and she laughed. “I know what you
mean,” she said, whirling into a little dance step on the sidewalk. “When
Cinderella had that slipper, it was her proof that magic had happened—and it
could happen again. We could give Pat hope. I mean, if magic is real just once,
then it could happen again.”